


The houses that he makes last till doomsday.

by Schemilix



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2012-08-04
Packaged: 2017-11-11 10:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schemilix/pseuds/Schemilix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When all is said and done the dead must be buried and wounds must heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The houses that he makes last till doomsday.

He learns afterwards that his chocobo has fled. At once his resolve, his driving anger, bursts like a crushed grape and he, carefully, sits down on the edge of a step. He plants the tip of his blade into the earth, folds his hands over the hilt and, placing his forehead on his clasped fingers, only then lets the tears come.  
Wiegraf wonders who it is he wronged in some past life, to have deserved being born in this place, this family, to take two steps forward and one step back, always.  
Boco had been his mount during the Fifty Years War. Maybe someone will find her in the wilderness and rescue her. Perhaps fate will at least spare the bird.

They pretend they thought he was praying, though all know of his distaste for the gods. Everyone has red eyes and half have tear tracks through the dirt on their faces; nobody comments on his. Not even Jemime as she chastises him mother-like for running so far with a wound like this, and damn near makes him cry again with the ruthlessness of her ministrations.  
Those not slain by the Beoulve boy and his cronies have wrapped her in her cloak and seen to her wake. Wiegraf stands on the threshold, frozen. The bandage around his midriff chafes. Strange that he should feel that when the amount of milk of poppy in his blood stream makes him half numb and near delirious. Last night he tried to pretend this was all a hallucination, or that he was dead and this was surely Hell, but it made him feel no better.  
He thinks of her face, the set of her jaw when he chastised her for endangering herself, the way she smiled lop-sided when he told her to be safe - as if she needed telling, but as if either of them were anything but reckless and foolish.  
He had known she intended to martyr herself, as had he. There was no way to succeed and live for chattel.  
Both bore scars from the war as they survived side by side. A scar on the arm, ragged, or a notch on the collarbone, or the many deep tracks wrought into heart muscle indelibly. They did not mention one another's pain, or their own. When Milleuda woke tear-stained and shaking she took the tisane he had made because he had not slept and neither spoke.  
All of this is under that shroud. He can't trust himself not to tangle it up with her lying cold, and scar her memory. Wiegraf owes it to his sister to remember her as she was - fierce, honourable, incorrigible and often infuriating. He remembers hair pulling and sacrificing rations for one another in the same thread of thought. He remembers how sometimes, when they argued and he took an arrow, that she would be rougher than necessary in getting the blasted thing out. Or how once he had locked her in a cupboard out of spite.  
It's anticlimactic, almost, when he walks in to see a body, pale and grey now they had at least washed her face, swaddled like a child - same in, same out of the world - and they couldn't change that even in death she still furrowed her brow. He'd said that she'd grow old and have lines on her face and she, laughing, had said she intended to stay young and pretty - she slapped him when he snorted - gay and smooth forever.  
Jemime hides her tears poorly and Ophellia's face is tellingly stony. He places a hand on the white mage's shoulder before he leaves, heavy inside.  
When Wiegraf thinks of the name Milleuda he sees a young woman bloody and grinning, alive. He sighs through his nose, grateful that her corpse, at least, won't haunt him.

The rain is welcome but its effect is not. For every inch of skin the water cools the toil of digging is worsened. The mud is heavy and reluctant under the spade, and the hole scarcely deepens with each load, rather oozes.  
"Wiegraf, you need rest. You are at risk of infection as it is without re-opening such wounds."  
Jemime. Wiegraf looks down at the red bloom on his bandages - the rain makes it look more dramatic than it is, he thinks - shrugs and says,  
"It needs be done." Then he carries on. He has dug perhaps a foot down in a very sorry looking rectangle.  
"But not alone."  
"If it's the last thing I do I'll have this grave dug. Hell, even if you'll be needing to put me in it - "  
"You may well be, you're lucky that the blade missed the more vital viscera." Jemime's arms are folded and her small face creased with concern - and mulishness.  
Wiegraf makes a graceless noise and bites his shovel into the mud again. "Lucky?" He sighs at the self-piteous note in his voice, chides himself under his breath, and renews his efforts stubbornly.  
"If you'd like a pretty scar that keeps you from bending, ser, you keep as you are. My magicks can only do so much," Jemime entreats him, somewhat like she is talking to a petulant child. "Let us help."  
"Don't tell me what I can and cannot do!" Wiegraf barks, suddenly, and sinks the shovel into the earth with a snarl.  
Though she flinches at the sudden outburst - as a commander, Wiegraf is a very loud man when he chooses to be - Jemime quickly sets her face again and draw herself up to her full height. With Wiegraf in the hole and her willowy build, she towers like a vengeful saint.  
"Don't do this, Wiegraf."  
"Jemime."  
"Don't growl at me, Folles! She was our commander, she was your sister but I fought with her too, I watched her die while I tried to save her. I shan't let you grieve alone and I shall not let you damage your hale body over it." She pauses a moment and then adds, firmly, "This isn't just about you. We need you now more than ever, don't do this to us, Wiegraf. With Milleuda gone we're tried enough."  
For a long time Wiegraf's eyes retain their stubborn, resentful glint, but with both members of the company digging their heels in and Wiegraf, quite simply, in a muddy pit, he sighs.  
"Fine. Bring Ophellia with you." The 'only' is unspoken yet audible all the same.

By the time they have finished the rain has stopped and Jemime is more of a brown mage. Ophellia takes the limp bundle laid by the grave and hands her to Wiegraf. He places her down. There are no words to speak.  
Ankle deep in water, both Jemime and Wiegraf struggle to slither out and Wiegraf, exhausted, accepts more help from the knight than he would have liked.  
The poppy is wearing off. He concentrates on the battle wounds and his tired arms as they set about filling his sister's shallow grave. Half of the work is done by the mud sliding and soon they stand by a ragged patch on the plains devoid of grass, panting.  
"What of her sword?"  
Ophellia remains on her knees when she replies, breathing deeply from the hours of effort.  
"They stole it."  
"Nobles gifted with a glut of gold and they steal the sword of a peasant?" Wiegraf's eyes burn for a moment before he says, "Mine is in its scabbard, I took it off. Bring it to me."  
Without a word the knight takes the holy blade from its scabbard and passes it to him, holding it carefully by the blade.  
A relic of the Fifty Years War, Wiegraf saw it fitting, as the seeds of insurrection grew, to use the techniques taught to him, this sword given to him, to tear down injustice.  
With its blessing, its honed balance, its craftsmanship, it would be worth enough to offer he and his sister some succour from starvation. Not being proficient in the arts of the holy sword, Milleuda's own sword had been standard issue and, eventually, discarded as the twisted lump of steel it had become.  
He sinks his sword into the virgin earth. Nobody is fool enough to steal a sword from a warrior's grave and, besides, they are in the middle of the plains. Just in case he memorises the position of the rocks, judging the paces from a particular outcrop, in case someone would dare risk a dead woman's curse.  
Jemime and Ophellia murmur prayers, heads bowed and hair clotted with mud. Wiegraf walks away.

**Author's Note:**

> Jemime and Ophellia are named after the two generics I stuck with through my playthrough - Jemime a mystic and Ophellia a Dragoon, both started as the classes mentioned here. They represent two of the generics you fight in the battle against Milleuda.
> 
> Wiegraf is wounded here because, well, you do beat the shit out of him. The 'they stole it' is me poking fun at the fact that the rich Beoulve kid has his cronies nick things off their enemies.


End file.
